Thursday, October 30, 2014

Director Chuck
Russell’s The Blob (1988) is, in
hindsight, a fairly impressive achievement on several levels. First, at just
under $20,000,000 it’s a fairly low-budget rehash of a 1958 cult classic about
a protoplasmic ‘thing’ from another
world…or so it would seem. The remake adds a neat little twist; the presumed
meteor fallen from the sky is actually a biological test satellite launched by
the U.S. military, whose bio unit have arrived en masse, naively endeavoring to
‘contain’ their formless threat with conventional weapons – and even more
conventional wisdom. Second, most of the movies effects are done full-scale and
in-camera with only a few obvious matte process shots and miniatures evident
during the climactic showdown; Russell’s blob primarily constituted from the
same thickening agent used in a McDonald’s milkshake. That alone makes me never want to drink their milkshakes again! Third, the cast – featuring Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith
(among others) – are more than competent.

Too few horror
movies have hedged their bets on A-class SFX, but third rate forgettable faces
with minimal acting talent to carry the load. Yes, The Blob is still chocked full of ‘stock characters’ bordering on
cliché; the oversexed football jock (Ricky Paull Goldin), the high school
princess/cheerleader (Smith), the leather-wearing/motorcycle-riding rebel
without a cause (Dillon), the religious zealot (Del Close) and the emotionless
government agent (Joe Seneca). But the actors inserted into these axioms have
more to offer and this makes their characterizations not only believable, but
fairly compelling, even when the blob is nowhere to be seen. Fourth, the screenplay byChuck Russell
and Frank Darabont (cribbing from the 1958 classic written byTheodore
Simonson and Kay Linaker), has managed the minor coup of taking a premise we’ve
already seen, borrowing its most iconic bits, but taking it in a slightly newer direction that never seems to grossly
bastardize or plagiarize from the original.

It shouldn’t
have worked, except that Russell has given us an analogous, shapeless terror
even more disgustingly toxic and aggressive than its predecessor. Whereas the
original blob rolled along the streetslike a giant piece of raspberry Jell-o (there is, in
fact, a hilarious Jell-o reference in Russell’s remake) and oozed through air
ducts and sewers with the consistency and contents of pink Play Doh, this new amorphous
bio-hazard warps and twists like a lacerated bowel with colon-esque extensions;
acidic, lassoing unsuspecting victims from their theater seats, bitch-slapping
them into the pavement or corrosively devouring their flesh in a gelatin tub of
goo that drops like a spider from the ceiling, strong enough to crush and
consume a glass and metal telephone booth with its victim already paralyzed
inside. Of course, the original Blob
was blessed with the presence of Steve McQueen, who brought a psychological
complexity to the lead role; also, in retrospect, the cache of his megawatt
star power – as yet untapped, or rather – acknowledged – when the 1958 film had
its premiere. Russell’s remake supplants the importance of the male
protagonist; all brawn and street smarts as played by Dillon and vetted by
Smith’s proto-feminist warrior/princess who takes charge in the third act. She
saves him and he repays the favor in kind. The
Blob…a love story?

Hardly. In
fact, at 95 minutes the Russell/Darabont screenplay hasn’t the time to give us
anything more or better than these cardboard cutouts; remedial in their motivations
and even less convincing in their hyper-intensive will to survive. In the
post-atomic age, self-preservation remains paramount, coupled with the film’s
subtext of exposing an insidious big, bad U.S. government chemical warfare run
amuck. The Blob is rather
heavy-handed in its telescopic focus on the time-honored cliché of illicit
teenage sex leading to dire consequences; nowhere more evident than in the
scene where football jock, Scott Jeske (Goldin) attempts to cop a feel (and
possibly more) from his presumably inebriated date, Vicki De Soto (Erika
Eleniak) who, regrettably, has already been consumed by the blob and thus is
lying in wait to swallow Scott whole too. The
Blob is one of only a handful of horror movies to graphically illustrate
the killing of a child – Douglas Emerson as the hapless Eddie Beckner, ingested
by the blob in the aqueducts beneath the town. Interestingly, The Blob did not receive the dreaded
R-rating for this infraction, director Chuck Russell taking pride in the fact his
movie departed from the tried and true mantra of preserving the innocent. In The Blob nothing is for certain. It
isn’t only the peripheral characters who meet with a gruesome end. In fact,
Russell seems to relish establishing his cast, then picking them off one at a
time; dispatching the all-American clean-cut, Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch Jr.)
first; almost immediately followed up by his less altruistic counterpart, Scott
Jeske. Along the way we also lose a homeless coot, Hobbes (Frank Collison), the
town’s cook/dishwasher, George Ruit (Clayton Landey), waitress, Fran Hewitt
(Candy Clark), sheriff, Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn), his deputy, Bill Briggs
(Paul McCrane) and, predictably, the evil government agent chiefly responsible
for this mutant bio-toxin, Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca).

Like its
predecessor, The Blob is a
cautionary tale about mankind terrorized and forced to face the unknown. Unlike
the 1958 strain, however, this blob is man’s own doing; the criminality behind
its Frankenstein-esque incubation our cross to bear. Co-writers, Chuck Russell
and Frank Darabont have given us the solemnity and shocks we expect. But they
rarely skimp on the comedy either; attaining a careful balance between the
scary and the silly that never disappoints or fails to chill to the bone. In
hindsight, the golden age of contemporary horror ultimately remains the 1970’s
rather than the 1980’s; a decade where blood and guts undeniably replaced
spookily lit cheap thrills, rarely emerging in half light from the more
foreboding shadows.

The
distinction must therefore be made between ‘traditional
horror movie’ and the ‘slasher flick’;
the latter, generally bereft of a single original idea that goes beyond how
many ‘clever’ ways to photograph a
person’s head being split open with an axe. All the more refreshing then, thisBlob never entirely veers into that
gruesome cruelty by brutalizing the audience with such schlock and nonsense.
Save a rather stomach-churning moment when one victim is face-planted, then
bone-crushingly sucked down a conventional sink drain (aside, I wonder how the
skull fit through the elbow joint), and The
Blob diverges to a sort of ole time brooding magic for its shudders;
Russell giving just enough gore to satisfy without sickening us on his
heart-palpating roller coaster ride.

The Blob opens with a few ominous shots of the seemingly
abandoned small town of Arborville, California; Michael Hoenig’s eerie
underscore punctuating the absence of human life as a cool wind blows a few
sparse autumn leaves down these vacant streets.
Interestingly, we’re shown the façade of a church, complete with stone
statuary; also a graveyard looking murky and fog-laden (interesting, because
never again does the movie bother to revisit or explore the religious ramifications;
the Reverend Meeker played strictly for laughs and camp by comedian, Del
Close). From here, director, Chuck Russell segues to an ebullient high school
football match; jocks, Paul Taylor and Scott Jeske discussing the finer points
of seducing the prom princess, Meg Penny. Jeske’s a sly dog with only one thing
on his mind. But Taylor needs the right moment to pop the question of a first
date. He finds it after being crushed at the fifty yard line by members of the
opposing team; Meg leaning over him with concern and accepting his proposition
outright before he blacks out.

Russell now
cuts to a broken bridge at the nearby, but remote, wooded area of Elkin’s
Grove; juvenile delinquent Brian Flagg making his umpteenth attempt to jump,
but failing to cross, the precipice on his motorcycle. He is quietly observed
with amusement by the mute, homeless man, Hobbes, collecting beer cans with his
dog. The bike needs some work. But Brian
is relatively unscathed…well…except for his pride. He promptly hitches a ride
back into town to borrow his boss, Moss Woodley’s (Beau Billingslea) ratchet tool
set. Meanwhile, at the local diner, sheriff Herb Geller is struggling to
finagle his own first date with waitress, Fran Hewitt. She awkwardly resists,
but then scribbles a note on Herb’s bill explaining she gets off at 11pm. Could
it be love? Alas, no. Because the town is in for a very unwelcome surprise
after a meteorite crash lands in Hobbes’ backyard. The inquisitive old coot
pokes at the bubbling ooze with a stick and, predictably, the blob emerges to
begin devouring Hobbes’ hand.

In town, the
Reverend Meeker runs into Jeske, who has already cockily ordered the pharmacist
(Art LaFleur) to get him a pack of ribbed Trojans for his hot date with Vicki
De Soto. Lying to Meeker, the condoms are actually meant for Taylor’s evening
rendezvous with Meg – and quite unaware the pharmacist also happens to be Meg’s
father – Jeske hurries off to be with Vicki. In the meantime, Taylor arrives at
Meg’s home; meeting her mother (Sharon Spelman), Meg’s much younger brother,
Kevin (Michael Kenworthy) and his best friend, Eddie Beckner, who are intent on
sneaking into an R-rated movie; aided in their petty larceny by Eddie’s older
brother, Anthony (Jamison Newlander), who also happens to be an usher at the theater.
It’s just another run-of-the-mill family night in a small town; everyone
desperate for an early snowfall to help boost the local economy. Alas, tonight
will be decidedly different.

Returning to
his bike for repairs, Brian is confronted by Hobbes who endeavors to lop off
his hand with a hatchet; the blob continuing to consume him as Brian pursues
Hobbes into the forest. Hobbes rushes onto the highway, struck, but only
wounded, by Taylor who is driving with Meg. Taylor agrees to take Hobbes to the
nearby hospital, but orders Brian into the car as well, as a witness. Russell’s
first bit of social commentary follows as the foursome arrives at the hospital,
virtually ignored by the attending nurse (Margaret Smith) – who callously never
looks up from her paperwork but has the audacity to inquire whether Hobbes has
Blue Cross before attending to his wound. Brian elects to skip out, leaving
Taylor and Meg to file the lengthy paperwork while Hobbes is taken to an
isolated examination room and left there unattended. Some first date!
Inadvertently, Taylor catches a glimpse of a queer rumbling beneath Hobbes’ bed
sheet, approaching the stretcher and peeling back the covers to reveal the
lower half of the old man eaten through.

Panicked and
ordering the attending physician (Jack Nance) to attend Hobbes immediately,
Taylor rushes into a nearby office to telephone for the sheriff. Alas, he is
unaware – until it’s much too late - the blob has attached itself to the
ceiling; the amorphous/veiny gelatin dropping to devour Taylor as a horrified
Meg looks on. One of the oddities of this blob is that it seems to
discriminately choose its victims. There is, for example, no good reason why
this glutinous wad should not ingest Meg as she struggles in vain to rescue
Taylor from his fate; or the doctor or everyone else in the hospital for that
matter; and director Russell never quite gets around to explaining how Meg
manages to survive the ordeal unharmed to be taken home to relative safety by
her mother shortly thereafter; Mr. Penny blaming everything on Brian, who he
sincerely hopes will hang for Taylor’s death.

Even as it
possesses no tangible mode of transport (eg. legs, feelers, etc.) to make it efficiently
mobile, the blob covers an incredible amount of territory by simply rolling
around; surfacing next at a remote location in the woods where Jeske is all set
to have his way with a fairly inebriated Vicki. While this road trip Lothario
is busy mixing more cocktails from the trunk of his car – laden with an
enviable bartender’s garage of alcoholic libations – the blob sneakily oozes
into his car and devours Vicki, who is passed out, from the inside; Jeske
returning to his paramour and receiving his just desserts for attempting to cop
a feel; the blob bursting forth from Vicki’s chest. Director, Russell’s homage to both Ridley
Scott’s Alien (1979) and John
Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) are
fairly transparent. The original blob was weird, but nevertheless relatively
conventional in its consumption of human flesh. It simply oozed all over
everybody. This blob is a far more passionate creature, capable of entering the
human body in the most devious ways, just like Scott’s alien organism. It also
maintains a back catalog of its victims, frequently regurgitating their
likenesses moments before it swallows its next hapless prey.

Meg sneaks out
of her bedroom to go in search of Brian, the only one who actually believes her
story. He’s glib at first, and condescending as he strolls off to the diner for
a midnight snack. Meg calls him out on his macho fakery and he reveals a tender
side as he coaxes her to share his sandwich. Meanwhile, in the kitchen,
cook/dishwasher George Ruit is attempting to unplug a stopped up drain, unaware
the blob is actually hiding inside the pipe. The blob erupts from its hiding
spot, pulling, then pulverizing George into bloody pulp; sucking him whole down
the pipes before spewing itself like a gooey nuclear thunder cloud into the
kitchen and cornering Meg and Brian inside the backroom freezer. Once again, the
blob discriminates; allowing Fran, the waitress to escape to a nearby telephone
booth where she desperately tries to call the sheriff. The blob drools down the
sides of the glass booth, revealing remnants of Sheriff Herb already half digested,
before crushing it and absorbing Fran. Reverend Meeker witness the blob
slinking into a nearby sewer. Upon exploring the ravaged diner he discovers
several frozen crystals of the blob still inside the freezer, collecting and
isolating them in a clear Mason jar.

Told by the
police secretary the Chief is missing and Deputy Briggs is near Elkin’s Grove
investigating a fallen meteorite, Meg and Bryan hurry to the forest; confronted
by Dr. Meddows and his crack team of quarantine specialists wearing protective
suits. Meddows lies to the teens,
explaining the blob is a biohazard from another world. He orders Meg and Brian
into the back of an ambulance bound for town. Brian manages a daring escape.
But Meg chooses to remain behind. She arrives in town and is reunited with her
mother and father; the inhabitants corralled into the nearby city hall under
the false pretext they are in grave danger of succumbing to a plague. As Meg
skulks off to the theater to find Kevin and Eddie, she is unaware the blob has
already overtaken the movie house projectionist and theater manager (Pons
Maar). The blob now makes its presence
known to the movie patrons, who scatter in terror. Many are overtaken by the
blob. But Meg manages to find Kevin and Eddie, the trio narrowly escaping into
a back alley and down a sewer shaft into the aqueducts beneath the town.

The blob makes
chase. Meanwhile, Meddows has sent two of his men in search of the blob; both
easily consumed while they distract the creature from destroying Meg and Kevin.
Alas, Eddie is not as lucky; wrestled underwater and eaten alive. Brian, who
has managed an escape from Meddows and his men, has entered the drain pipe on
his bicycle. He finds Meg, but the pair becomes trapped in the sewers when
Meddows, endeavoring to contain the creature, deliberately traps them too by
parking one of his trucks atop the manhole cover. Retrieving the rocket
launcher from the backpack of one of the fallen government agents, Brian blows
the truck to smithereens; emerging in the center of town with Meg in tow and
exposing the whole cover story invented by Meddows as a fraud. A stand-off
occurs between Meddows, Deputy Briggs and Brian, moments before the angered
blob erupts from the manhole and kills Meddows.
It also causes Reverend Meeker to become severely burned.

As the
terrified inhabitants flee, barricading inside city hall, Briggs is snapped in
two by the blob. Realizing the only thing that can stop the blob is the cold,
Brian elects to drive his boss’ snow maker into it. The blob retaliates by
overturning the vehicle and Meg bravely risks her own life to free Brian from
the truck and detonate its tanks of C02. Becoming entangled in the process, she
is rescued by Brian moments before the bomb goes off. The frightened town’s
folk emerge from city hall to discover the blob neutralized into frozen
crystals; Moss declaring they had better get these frozen remains over to the
icehouse before they thaw. We cut to a summer tent revival; the Reverend Meeker
– apparently madder than a hatter – preaching sin and Armageddon to a small
congregation of God-fearing evangelicals. Afterward, Meeker is confronted by
one attendee, who timidly inquires when the end of times will come. Meeker,
raising his Mason jar with a thawed out mini-blob still inside, declares, “Soon madam, the Lord will give me a
sign!”

For diehard
horror aficionados, The Blob is a
fairly juicy affair (pun, intended). It has its shortcomings, however, chiefly
the dated 80’s milieu, typified by big hair – particularly Dillon’s, resembling
a lion’s mane. In our jaded age of
wallpapered CGI effects, there is more than quaintness to be gleaned from this
pastiche to the prototypical fifties epoch of ‘it came from another world’ faceless/graceless atomic fallout
inspired weirdness. And director/co-writer
Chuck Russell, together with Frank Darabont, have truly done their homework on
‘the blob’ itself. This isn’t that
giant piece of Jell-o recalled as the perfect make-out drive-in movie. It’s a
more sinister affair; less quantifiable as…well…a blob…and more easily
considered some sort of grotesque science experiment gone hopeless awry. Adding
a government conspiracy to the equation really doesn’t hurt the movie’s basic
premise; although, in hindsight, it doesn’t exactly add all that much to it
either. The academic cronies fronted by the perpetually steely-eyed Dr. Meddows
are little more than monolithic and powerless ‘suits’ – literally and
figuratively – on loan from the conspiracy theorist stooge factory.

Mark Irwin’s
cinematography is first rate and there is a certain amount of mileage gained by
the fairly convincing special effects. This blob, unlike its predecessor, is a
constantly evolving mutant strain of bacteria; one that appears to place favor
to its victimization. It hunts not only
with an insatiable appetite but with a vengeance. While the ‘58 blob has often
been referenced as a euphemism for the communist Red Scare, this ‘88 blob seems
to parallel the cadaverous AIDS pandemic. The creature’s pearly grey and
bubbling façade resembles a mucous membrane. It strikes with phallic-inspired
tentacles, invading its host stealthily and silently without being recognized.
It capably divides its cellular structure, just like a virus, thus aggressively
metastasizing to other things, and so on.

Subtexts
aside, The Blob marks the pinnacle
of that evolution and partnership between Chuck Russell and Frank
Darabont, whose symbiosis had begun on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). In creating The Blob’s many and varied special
effects, SFX guru Tony Gardner supervised a crew of thirty-three, including
artist, Chet Zar and mechanical effects designer, Bill Sturgeon; everyone
conspiring to bring out the absolute very best for this loose remake. Early tests with CGI were tried, but
eventually scrapped for the more tactile approach to generating visceral
chills. As a result, this blob feels decidedly ghastly and very sincere. While
the ‘58 version had Steve McQueen – an undeniable asset – for obvious technical
reasons – the ‘88 version excels. However, this blob’s overall success is only
partly due to the believability of the actual creature. The other half rests
squarely on the shoulders of its cast who sell the freak show with understated authenticity.

Twilight Time’s
Blu-ray, under their licensing agreement with Sony Home Entertainment, has
yielded another solid effort. It’s astounding it’s taken this long for The Blob to arrive on home video in
hi-def. Alas, this disc isn’t perfect. Most of the 1080p transfer is softly
focused, fine detail generally wanting, especially in the darker sequences. Occasionally,
effects are less than seamless, owing to Blu-ray’s higher resolution revealing
matte work in particular. Another issue is grain; looking a tad thicker than
anticipated, particularly during ‘optical effects’ shots. But grain is
decidedly distracting in the scene at the diner afterhours when Brian offers
Meg some of his sandwich. Contrast too seems a tad anemic. Still, colors are fairly solid throughout and
flesh tones look appropriately nature. We won’t poo-poo it any further. The
overall characteristic is decidedly dated and looking appropriately vintage ‘80s.
The DTS-HD 5.1 mix fairs infinitely
better, revealing some squishy sound effects and subtly nuanced rustlings during
more quiescent sequences. Overall, not flashy but good and solid and well
represented on this disc. Extras are limited to an isolate score. It’s sparse
at best, but nicely handled. We also get a featurette featuring a brief and
truncated Q&A with director Chuck Russell, and an infinitely more engaging
audio commentary by Russell and horror authority, Ryan Turek, plus two
theatrical trailers. Bottom line: recommended!

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Joan Crawford
officially entered the ‘crazy lady’
stage of her movie career playing a psychologically deranged caregiver in
Curtis Bernhardt’s Possessed (1947,
and not to be confused with Possessed,
1932 – another Crawford vehicle, costarring Clark Gable). The two films are not
related, thematically or otherwise; Crawford’s love-starved freak of nature in
Bernhardt’s movie, doggedly pursuing playboy/architect, David Sutton (carried
off with uncharacteristic charisma by Van Heflin) who would much prefer to have
never met Crawford’s Louise Howell in the first place. What makes a person
star-struck senseless for somebody else remains the stuff to which volumes of
psychological probing by the likes of Freud and his ilk have been dedicated;
also, some harrowing case files at the FBI, profiling the hearts and minds of
serial stalkers/killers, who can develop their telescopically focused obsession
for certain people as easily as the poor bugger lost in the desert, desiring a
drink of Perrier because he is dying from thirst.

Crawford’s performance in Possessed is imbued with a stroke of sheer genius; the Randal
McDougall/Silvia Richards’ screenplay less so. We’ve seen a lot of Possessed before; the
embittered/invalided, nee suicidal wife; the unstable second wife; the dark old
house situated on a dreary cliff side, haunted by painful memories and creaking in a late autumn thunderstorm; the devoted husband destined to remain unhappy and the unfaithful
lover, preparing to meet his just desserts. The extremes are more exaggerated in Possessed, perhaps, because so is Crawford's trip into this grand guignol; but it’s still the same old pulp. What sets the film
apart is Crawford herself; unafraid to look haggard and insane; playing the part of this shockingly confused/terrified matron; the last vestiges of the doting wife and stepmother unable to be reconciled with the polar opposite of her crumbling emotional psyche. Crawford's Louise Howell is doomed to remain terrorized, unhinged and institutionalized for life. She's a tragic figure, a lovelorn frump and a warped human being; just par for the course of what Crawford's later 'heroines' in the movies would become. But here we get our real first taste of Crawford the unconventional star and she remains a force of unbridled nature with which to be reckoned. Put bluntly: I'd much rather have her for a friend than an enemy - even if she is nuts!

Possessed is actually a lot more psychologically complex and
convincing than most movies; Louise’s catatonia serving as the crux for a
hypno-regression exercise that delves into the more recent past and illustrates
how a seemingly ‘normal’ woman can
suddenly turn to ravenous man-trap with just the right tweak to her hot-wiring.
In this case, jealousy mixes with an unhealthy blend of expectation; also a
wrinkle in Louise’s own fundamentally flawed misconception: that David Sutton
is…well…as crazy about her as she is for him. According the Ranald MacDougall
and Silvia Richards’ screenplay (loosely based on a story by Rita Weiman),
Crawford’s demented mistress spends the bulk of the movie precariously balanced
on the extremely edge of this psychosis; the devoted second wife to
millionaire, Dean Graham (Raymond Massey) after his first, who just happened to
be Louise’s patient, is found floating face down in the lake near the couple’s
summer home.

Could Louise have…? Highly unlikely, since the
absence of female companionship immediately paves the road for romantic
prospects of a very different kind. Put bluntly, the aging Graham is no David
Sutton and Louise isn’t really interested in either him or his money, although
it will take the movie’s entire second act to basically convince Graham’s
suspicious college-bound daughter, Carol (Geraldine Brooks) of as much. Possessed falls in line with other
sundry and penetrating movies dedicated to the then hot topic of
psychoanalysis. It seems every director from Hitchcock to Otto Preminger had
their crack at bat: movies like Spellbound,
Laura (both made in 1945), The Snake Pit (1948), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and so on,
plying the artful craft of cinema with the more often misunderstood probing of
the human mind. Alas, some situations cannot be helped. Some people are like
that too.

Possessed comes at a critical juncture in Joan Crawford’s
career. Only five years earlier she had been branded ‘box office poison’; MGM’s favorite shop girl/clotheshorse makes
good unceremoniously thrown under the proverbial bus by L.B. Mayer to make way
for a new crop of younger, more malleable child stars on the rise. Crawford
wasn’t the only one to suffer the slings and arrows of this humiliation, with
her ever-increasing demands for bigger, better pictures, and, temporarily
languishing after a series of high profile commercial flops. But she would
prove one of the most resilient against being labeled a ‘has been’; picking up
the baton at Warner Bros. with an unlikely Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce (1945).

In an era
where one female actress is pretty much a carbon copy of another, seen
elsewhere and barely recalled, Crawford undeniably remains the standout; her
willful defiance of that early start afforded her in life (as gawky, dance hall
queen from a broken and impoverished home, with a closet full of Charleston
loving cups and equally as many broken hearts scattered along the road to
success); by 1942, Crawford’s ensconced movie queen wasn’t about to take guff
from anybody: not even her former boss, Louie Mayer. So off she went,
practically willingly, to Warner’s back lot as a rival to their reigning diva,
Bette Davis – frequently a very course pebble creating a sore bunion in Jack L.
Warner’s shoe. In hindsight, Davis and Crawford were so similar in their
upbringings, public ambitions and private desires, they might have just as
easily allied against the world as the best of friends…if only the whole darn
competition between these two tigresses hadn’t already been put into place by
Warner. Alas, Davis ruled the roost at that studio and wasn’t about to share
her fame or success with anyone. And
Crawford, despite being the more congenial star at first, grew to despise Davis
for her arrogance.

She would,
however, prove Davis one better by taking and making something of the parts
Bette mercifully turned down – like the title character in Mildred Pierce. On the ether of this surprise Oscar win, Crawford
pushed on, her box office cache cemented with Humoresque (1946) and later, The
Damned Don’t Cry (1950). Crawford’s reign at Warner was, in fact,
short-lived, Possessed sandwiched
right in the middle of all the fanfare and hoopla over her ‘resurrection’ from
the oblivion. Bernhardt’s movie is a minor
masterpiece; not quite as effective at tapping into the Crawford mystique,
though nevertheless efficacious at expanding her range of possibilities.
Crawford is, after all, working against her newly established archetype as the
tough-as-nails go getter with the proverbial heart of stone, rather than gold.

Possessed finds Crawford in rather unfamiliar territory. She’s
not an evil woman, although she winds up doing wicked things. It’s rather
startling to witness the moment in the film when Crawford’s crazed stepmother
confronts her husband’s daughter, Carol for staying out late with David,
viciously walloping and sending her down a flight of neck and back-breaking
stairs with guilty satisfaction dramatically caught in her eyes, only to
suddenly be stirred from this sweaty elation by the sound of a car driving up
to the house and Carol entering by the front door just a few moments later. We
suddenly realize all this vengeance has been imagined; or rather, realistically
concocted in Louise Howell’s degenerating mind as an alternative reality. Are
we to pity Louise for her mental subsidence or fear for Carol’s safety this
second time around? Crawford plays the scene right down the middle; her look of
thorough disgust over her own vial thoughts never revealed, coupled with an
imploding sense of self-confidence and genuine concern she is about to crack
under pressure; all of this is played out in Crawford’s magnificent performance
and it provides us with a conflicted empathy for this woman with whom we ought
not sympathize, yet cannot but want to help pull back from the precipice of her
looming madness.

Possessed is given the A-list Warner Bros. treatment, utilizing
slightly redressed sets from previous pictures and taking full advantage of its
brief location shoot in downtown Los Angeles. The film actually opens with one
of the most startling debuts for a female character in any vintage thriller;
our star looking utterly haggard – and obviously wearing very little (if any)
makeup as she blindly stumbles down these deserted downtown streets. Crawford
gives us Louise Howell warts and all; bug-eyed and sleep deprived, muttering
over and over again the name ‘David’ to some of the most non-empathetic people
on the planet. The street car driver, as example, ignores her entirely, closing
his folding doors in her face. The guy working behind the counter of a greasy
spoon isn’t much better; offering her a cup of coffee before telephoning an
ambulance to cart Louise off to the insane asylum. Actually, she’s taken to the
local hospital (easily identifiable as Los Angeles Country General…the same
façade used for TV’s longest running soap opera; General Hospital 1963-present)
and wheeled into the curiously labeled ‘psychopathic’ ward.

From here on
in, things begin to look up for Louise; marginally speaking. The kindly Dr.
Ames (Moroni Olsen) and his assistant, Dr. Craig (Don McGuire) tend to her
care; injecting Louise with a magic elixir that stirs her from this
self-imposed catatonia. Gaining access to Louise’s mind leads to a lengthy
regression into the past. We’re introduced to the Joan Crawford of our
expectations; immaculately quaffed and impeccably dressed after a moonlight
swim with her paramour, David Sutton. The two have been carrying on an
afterhours romance for presumably some time; Louise making her protestations
known one too many times to suit our dapper Dave. He isn’t opposed to having
his fun, just as long as it doesn’t cost him anything outright. But wedding
bells are not in his future – not yet. So, Louise tries to take back the
request. It’s no use. David’s mind is made up. He doesn’t want to see Louise
any more. Chartering her by speedboat back to the ample country estate at the
far side of the lake, Louise takes a mighty last stand to plead for
reconciliation. This is met with abject indifference from David and Louise
marches off in the direction of the great house to pout; momentarily admonished
by its lord and master, Dean Graham for not being present when his invalid wife
needed her most.

Louise reminds
Graham that Tuesdays are her day off and he apologizes for being so rude.
Actually, Graham’s not a bad egg; just a harried hubby whose nerves and
patience have worn thin. He and Louise are both under a lot of pressure; not
the least for being placed under a microscope by Dean’s wife, Pauline (Nana
Bryant) whose unwarranted suspicions have Louise and her husband carrying on an
affair right under her nose. Naturally, nothing could be further from the
truth. Louise’s heart belongs to David, even if he doesn’t want it. And Dean is
completely devoted to his crumbling marriage. It’s left him curmudgeonly and
defeated. For all concerned it really would be better if Pauline could just go
away for good.

Providence
grimly smiles on the household after Pauline goes missing; her lifeless body
eventually dredged up from the bottom of the lake. It’s a blessing, actually;
Louise believing she will be free to pursue David now that her responsibilities
as nursemaid are at an end. David has recently signed on with Dean’s firm to
build a pipeline somewhere in Canada. It will mean a separation of a few
months, and in the interim Graham proposes marriage to Louise; the smite of her
reluctant acceptance affecting Graham’s daughter, Carol, who refuses to believe
Louise didn’t have the whole affair mapped out from the moment she set foot
inside her father’s house. She even goes so far as to suggest Louise murdered
her mother. Graham chastises Carol for her wicked insinuations. This only
creates a deeper rift between daughter and stepmother. Interestingly, time
heals even this wound; Carol realizing Louise never meant her parents any harm.
However, as the bond between them grows, Louise becomes protective against
David’s sudden romantic interest in Carol. She is, after all, much too young
for him. Alas, Louise’s opinion of David begins to sour; her maternal nurturing
turning self-destructively inward as she begins to resent Carol for being
exactly the kind of girl she used to be and for fitting so neatly into David’s
idea of the disposable plaything; looking fashionable on his arm at the opera.

So far, Possessed has been a fairly standard
melodrama from Warner – a studio that came to foster a whole slew of
like-minded ‘family strife’ pictures like Old
Acquaintance (1943) and My
Reputation (1946); anchored by strong female heroines. But now, Curtis Bernhardt takes us down a
very dark corridor on an unexpected twist of circumstances: Louise’s jealousy
transformed into dissociative episodes of persecution and flights into hideous
wish-fulfilment, most predicated on achieving some sort of injuriousness that
will forever tear these newfound lovers apart. Because almost all of these
nightmarish episodes remain locked inside Louise’s brain (she never acts on
them) they become even more sinister; the audience recognizing how morally
bankrupt and mentally disturbed she truly is. But Bernhardt and Crawford do not
give us the leering monster in all her Medean-inspired flourish; rather, a
somewhat exhausted and half-beaten ‘good
woman’, desperately battling demons destined to drag her psyche into the
depths of psychotic despair.

Louise’s
spiraling mental condition evolves; voices in her head taking on the disturbing
contents of the first Mrs. Graham, despite Dean’s devotion. Alas, he is quite
unable to reach Louise for very long; their brief interludes of happiness
interrupted by more fantastical plots to murder, maim and otherwise destroy all
of their lives. The trigger that pushes Louise over the edge is David and
Carol’s wedding announcement. How can
they? Don’t they realize what will happen if they do? Louise makes a last ditch effort to end their
relationship. Carol, who has miraculously come around to deeply caring for
Louise in place of her own mother, is now deeply wounded by this betrayal of
her trust.

Even Graham
must acknowledge Louise has slipped beyond the salvation his own love and care
can provide. Desperate to spare his family the tragedy of another drawn-out
illness, Graham urges Louise to seek professional counseling. Instead, Louise
skulks off to David’s apartment, confronting him with a gun; ordering him to
cease in his plans to marry Carol.
Unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation, David believes he can
talk his way out. However, Louise is void of any vestige of love she might have
once harbored for David. He must be destroyed - and is; Louise emptying
Graham’s revolver into David’s belly until he is quite dead. We dissolve back
to Louise’s hospital room in the psychopathic ward; Crawford’s deglamorized
gargoyle insanely screaming David’s name and having to be subdued by the
doctors. Afterward, Dr. Ames pledges himself to Louise’s full recovery,
promising Graham he will do everything in his power to restore his wife to him.
Alas, in misunderstanding the depth of Louise’s obsession for the late David
Sutton, Ames may have bitten off more than he can chew; Graham offering Ames
whatever support is required to ‘fix’ the problem.

Possessed is a very curious Crawford picture; particularly its
ending, that offers not even a shred of optimism for our disturbed heroine.
Will she ever see the light of day except through the windows of a heavily
padded cell? Unlikely. Possessed
does, however, effectively foreshadow Hollywood’s rather perverse predilection
for defrocking its own screen queens from the 1930’s and 40’s. Bette Davis,
Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Swanson, Dorothy McGuire, et al. eventually found
themselves at the mercy of this grindhouse mentality to debunk their stature as
‘classy actresses’. Crawford’s
descent into the mouth of madness eventually led to her casting in other
like-minded fare; mostly notably, Robert Aldrich’s sublime grand gingnol, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
(1962) and, the deplorably subpar screamer, Berserk (1968).

This being the
beginning of the end, Crawford is, of course, divine in Possessed; illustrating a wellspring of imaginative talents for
playing more than the proverbial ‘bitch’;
drawing out our empathy for her character’s dreadful demise. The sing-song way
Bernhardt handles the intermittently interrupted flashback somewhat hampers
this narrative arc; the dissolves from Louise’s imperfect past to her even more
frightening present, clever enough from a photographic standpoint, but jarring
the continuity of the story nonetheless.
Raymond Massey and Van Heflin give credible support. But the picture
belongs to Crawford and she dutifully holds up her share with delectable
determination. Possessedought not to have worked except that it does –
magnificently so; audiences ready for a deglamorized view of femininity run
amuck. Interestingly, in such movies it’s usually the woman who descends into
lunacy, leaving the menfolk to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. In
the fictional realm of cinema, crazy men are serial killers. But crazy women
could easily be your grandmother or the girl you just decided to ask out on a
date. Yeow! Viewed today, Possessed
is a very fine example of this particular breed of stylized psycho-analytic
babble. And Crawford sells it to us as few of her generation could or did. Hers
is a performance on par with Gloria Swanson’s warped enchantress in Sunset Boulevard (1950).

The Warner
Archive’s Blu-ray ofPossessed is
another reason why I’ve steadily fallen in love with their corporate model for
releasing catalog to home video: pluperfect presentations in 1080p. Possessedhas never looked better. Does
it look perfect? Hmmmm. Warner has done everything possible to resurrect Joseph
Valentine’s superb noir cinematography. For the most part, they’ve admirably
succeeded. But the ‘thick’ characteristic of the image hasn’t entirely been
licked; grain frequently inconsistent from shot to shot or scene to scene.
Location work has a generally softer quality to it than studio-bound sequences.
This is, as it should be. But it remains ever so slightly jarring. There’s also
just a hint of edge enhancement here and there. Nothing egregious. Contrast is
gorgeous, except for one or two moments when it seems ever so slightly bumped.
Again, forgivable.

The pluses are
overwhelming: a razor-sharp image, staggering in the amount of fine detail and
permissible grain, accurately represented. It’s a stunner, in fact; close-ups
revealing minute details in hair and makeup. Gone is that greenish tint with
lower than anticipated contrast levels plaguing the DVD. Age related damage has
been virtually eradicated, including the excessive speckling that once existed
during a scene where David is briefly reunited with Louise – the water/mold
damage to the print replaced by a sumptuous, smooth and altogether satisfying
presentation. Extras are ported over from the DVD and include an audio
commentary and theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Possessed looks fabulous on Blu-ray. It now seems a no brainer we
can expect Crawford’s Oscar-winning Mildred
Pierce via the Archive sometime next year; hopefully Humoresque, Flamingo Road and A
Woman’s Face too. Speaking of noir: perhaps Warner would consider some
other viable candidates like Mystery
Street, Act of Violence, and Murder
My Sweet for such sweet treatment. We’ll see – and keep you posted!

Saturday, October 25, 2014

In the 1930’s
and 40’s the coupling of big names stars became a popular marketing ploy in
Hollywood: finding the perfect pair, as it were, and re-marketing them in serialized
or similarly themed movie franchises: Tracy and Hepburn, Greer Garson and
Walter Pigeon, Gable and Crawford, and so on. The endurance of such winning
teams was proof positive to the movie moguls, that when it came to popular
entertainments the best blend was richly achieved by an audience’s familiarity
with these iconic couples. Charles Shyer’s spookily lit and deftly executed
romantic comedy, I Love Trouble(1994)
draws its parallel from another great screen team: William Powell and Myrna
Loy. In the 1930’s and 40’s Powell and Loy were America’s great marrieds: Nick
and Nora Charles – a pair of dapper dilettantes on a lark and a spree; he the
debonair and marginally accomplished sleuth, she the wickedly satirical
appendage who had some of the best one-liners in their ‘Thin Man’ franchise. In
1939’s Another Thin Man, as example,
when asked on the telephone how their honeymoon vacation went, Loy quaintly
replies, “It was wonderful. Nick was
sober in Kansas City!”

Flash forward
to I Love Trouble and another
winning combo…well, at least on paper. By 1994, Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers
had been scripting urbane and sophisticated comedy gems for more than a decade;
their penchant for razor-sharp, shoot-from-the-hip dialogue augmenting such
slickly packaged entertainments as Private
Benjamin (1980), Irreconcilable
Differences, and, Protocol (both
released in 1984), and the superb remakes of Father of the Bride (1991 – 1995). I Love Trouble’s incubation and critical reception would hardly be
as rewarding; perhaps because, by then, it had become painfully obvious to both
partners their professional alliance had failed to morph into a happy marriage.
Shyer and Meyers would divorce in 1999; proving to each other, as well as the
rest of Hollywood, there was still life and profits to be derived separately.

I Love Trouble is very much a send up to the ‘Thin Man’ stylish and farce-laden
detective stories from the late 1930’s; a sort of pre-marital Nick and Nora
Charles romantic thriller, updated to accommodate the progressive social mores
of the 1990’s (no separate beds here, although, interestingly, Shyer/Meyers
have the couple marry – on the fly in Atlantic City, but hey…it’s still legal…
before loveless copulation can take place). I Love Trouble also plays to the strengths of its two costars: Nick
Nolte, looking craggily handsome, and at his arrogant best, with Julia Roberts
at her most seductively charming and wittily playful. There’s a genuine
chemistry at work between these two that harks all the way back to the infectious
Tracy/Hepburn model for romantic couplings. The critics didn’t think much of I Love Trouble when it premiered…but
what do the critics know that the audience does not? Still on a budget of $45 million, I Love Trouble’s return of $61,947,267
hardly made it a blockbuster.

Actually, in
the U.S. it failed to recoup its initial outlay. Still, I can recall sitting in
the theater back then and being held captive by the clever dialogue; the
tangibly clicking chemistry between Nolte and Roberts from the get-go, as his
established newspaper columnist, Peter Brackett hits on cub reporter, Sabrina
Peterson (Roberts) only to be cruelly shot down for his efforts by this gal who
only ‘thinks’ she’s holding all the
cards in their competitive race against time – and each other. “Look,” Peterson
pointedly explains, “I know every cub
reporter in a skirt would probably go gaga over the great Peter Brackett but
let me set you straight on a point. You have zero chance of scoring here. Trust
me. Move on!” to which Nolte’s confident bon vivant merely reclines, rather
than recoiling, adding “Where’d you say
you were from…Bitch-ville?”

I Love Trouble’s saving grace remains this
infectious – if mildly toxic – screen chemistry between Roberts and Nolte; he
playing up a decade’s worth of solid work in the movies; Roberts’ still feeling
her oats as an actress after the groundswell of mega-popularity foisted upon
her by the success of Pretty Woman
(1990). To some extent, the expectations
for I Love Trouble, to produce
another winning pair like Roberts and PW’s costar, Richard Gere, seems to have
held the movie’s popularity back; this and Touchstone’s lackluster press and
promotion, unceremoniously dumping it as a mid-summer release without much
fanfare. To be pointedly clear, the central plot – that of a mysterious train
derailment meant to cover up a far darker crime with political espionage
concealing a potentially harmful chemical for the pasteurization of milk, is
just a shay this side of kooky to wholly unbelievable. But actually, those
expecting a sensational thriller are missing the point. For I Love Troubleis a romantic screwball
and, perhaps, the last of its kind; the focus of Meyers/Shyer’s screenplay
definitely on the Brackett/Peterson love affair, complicated by the fact these
two just happen to be reporters vying for the same scoop on a murder mystery
with more twists and turns than an amusement park dark ride.

And it’s a
cleverly ambitious and mostly engaging film we get besides; the first act
effortlessly spent on the sublime competition between Nolte’s arrogant
womanizer and Roberts’ deliciously rigid girl-makes-good; each swatting the
insults and attempting to outdo the other. At one point Brackett deliberately
drops a hint of a clandestine meeting with the potential next link in the chain
of discovery, sending Peterson on a ‘wild goose chase’ – literally: Peterson’s
car stopped along a dirt country road by a gaggle of white-feathered fowl.
Brackett also sends Peterson a feisty little bulldog to celebrate her scooping
him out of his byline; the mutt (she later claims to have nicknamed after its
previous owner as ‘Little Dick’)
promptly urinating on a copy of her article. All of this revenge is sweetly
played out; mildly endearing and drawing the couple closer into each other’s
space until, at last, they agree to a truce, working together to unravel the
mystery and thus, discover there might be more between them than just the
printed word.

I Love Trouble immensely benefits from David
Newman’s bombastic underscore; truly capturing the flavor of this passionate
rivalry, but with a nostalgic nod to such pluperfect examples in the sub-genre
as His Girl Friday (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942). Even better
is John Lindley’s moody cinematography. Like the best of its ilk, I Love Trouble begins bright and breezy
with an unassuming train trip juxtaposed next to an ever so slightly more
ominous country funeral; the piece gradually growing darker as Lindley’s
camerawork moves out of the natural light and into the darker recesses of lonely
streets, eerily lit/abandoned movie houses and an experimental laboratory after
hours at the monolithic uber-modern, though soulless corporate entity – Chess
Chemical – serving as the penultimate setting for the last piece in
Shyer/Meyers’ highly inventive narrative jigsaw puzzle.

I Love Trouble begins by crystalizing the
duality in this light and shadow that will ultimately become the movie’s
métier. Two children (Hallie
Meyers-Shyer and Boone David Cates) witness the passing funeral cortege of retired
scientist, Darryl Beekman, who died in a tragic house fire. The moment is
interrupted by inserts of Darryl Beekman Jr. (Clark Gregg), forlorn as he
stands over his father’s casket, then hurriedly packing a briefcase with some
microfilm cleverly concealed in an ordinary writing pen as he nervously makes
his way to the railway station. There, Beekman is deliberately bumped into on
the platform by a trench-coated character, aptly nicknamed, Mando – the Thin
Man – (James Rebhorn), whose veiled purpose is to do Beekman Jr. and the train
some harm. We also catch a glimpse of newlyweds, Kevin (Kevin Breznahan) and
Jenny (Heidi Huber) boarding the car ahead of Beekman’s; the beginnings of a
life together torn asunder a few short hours after sundown, when the train
derails while attempting a turn a corner near an isolated bridge, killing Jenny
and Beekman.

Shift focus
momentarily: to the Chicago Chronicle where its staff is about to put the late
day edition to bed when news breaks of the derailment. The Chronicle’s
curmudgeonly editor, Matt (Robert Logia) insists Peter Brackett cover the beat,
something he hasn’t done since becoming a columnist for the paper. In fact,
Brackett’s writing career has really taken off since the debut of his first
novel, ‘White Lies’. With his own office, a personal secretary, Jeannie
(Olympia Dukakis) and minions like Evans (Jane Adams) and Sully (Joseph
D'Onofrio) to do his legwork, it’s safe to say Brackett is somewhat rusty on
his probative/investigating skills).
After all, the good life can make a guy soft – physically, but also in
the head. Hence, when Brackett arrives at the scene of the tragedy, he
instantly becomes more interested in chasing after the long legged Sabrina
Peterson than the scoop; covering the basics, but attempting to make inroads
into a first date. Much to Brackett’s dismay, Peterson is wholly unreceptive to
the idea. The camera cuts away briefly for a bit of integral exposition. We see
a pair of teenage thieves, Danny Brown (Kimo Wills) and Dixon (Chad Einbinder)
swipe a few pieces of luggage already recovered from the wreck; Mando shielding
himself from being discovered at the scene while jotting down the license plate
of the pair’s getaway car.

While Brackett
hurries off to dictate his findings, before attending his own book-signing
party, Peterson gets busy tailing Midrail employee, Ray Boggs (Kurt V. Hulett),
who is suspected of having mismanaged the maintenance of the car’s coupling,
thus, inadvertently creating the right circumstances for the crash. Spending
all night telephoning every Boggs in the telephone directory, Peterson
eventually winds up in contact with Ray’s mother, who suggests her son’s former
drinking problem may have returned to cloud his judgment. Thus, the next day, while the Chronicle’s story
about the crash is decidedly light on details, the rival Globe newspaper has an
inside exclusive interview with Bogg’s mother, written by Peterson. It isn’t long before a friendly rivalry is
sparked between Peterson and Brackett; each attempting to outdo the other;
Peterson holding her own against the more seasoned Brackett, despite the fact
she falls for a few of his ploys, like the aforementioned ‘wild goose chase’.

The two meet ‘cute’ at an annual newspaperman’s ball,
Shyer/Meyers slickly introducing us to yet another character integral to the
plot; oily politico, Sam Smotherman (Saul Rubinek), working for Senator Gayle
Robins (Marsha Mason) and who has the uncanny knack of dating Brackett’s sloppy
seconds. Smotherman’s current flame, Nadia (Laura Maye Tate) is, in fact,
Brackett’s latest castoff. Peterson isn’t about to put herself in this queue.
Besides, neither reporter seems to have the Midrail derailment story right: Ray
Bogg’s having professed his innocence and escaped becoming someone’s scapegoat
by passing a polygraph with flying colors. Oh, no: back to square one for
Peterson and Brackett; the latter getting his hands on Kevin and Jenny’s
videotape shot by their parents at the station shortly before the train
departed; Brackett observing the half-concealed body of someone disguised as a
Midrail worker, toying with the train’s coupling in the background.

In the
meantime, Peterson is contacted by Danny. It seems the kid has discovered
‘something’ that might be of importance to her investigation, and buoyed by the
prospect of collecting a reward for his efforts, agrees to meet her at the old
abandoned theater; the upstairs balcony he and Dixon call their home. Alas, someone gets to the boys first, murdering
both and leaving Peterson to discover the corpses. She takes notice of the
letters ‘L’ and ‘D’ scribbled in ink on Danny’s palm, jotting them down with a
pen pilfered from a nearby desk. Inadvertently, this will turn out to be the
same pen Darryl Beekman used to conceal the microfilm; although neither
Peterson nor the audience is aware of this just yet. Hurrying back to her car,
Peterson is briefly startled by the sudden appearance of Mando; her fitful
escape followed by Mando hiring another assassin, Pecos (Nestor Serrano) to
trail Peterson and recover the microfilm.
We momentarily shift to Brackett’s investigation; having come to the
home of the late Darryl Beekman to ask a few questions, but persuaded by his
widow, Delores (Megan Cavanagh) to meet much later at an office building
downtown where she insists it will ‘be safer’. What no one yet realizes is the
woman who answered Beekman’s door is not the real Delores!

After hours,
Brackett arrives at the office building, only to discover Peterson already
there; neither comprehending they’ve been set up until their elevator suddenly
stalls between floors and is fired upon by yet another paid assassin (Patrick
St. Esprit). In their ensuing escape from the hailstorm of bullets, Brackett
manages to cause the assassin to slip and fall to his death down the elevator
shaft; a slip of paper, with the words ‘Ext. 307’ scribbled on it, slipping out
of his coat pocket. Returning to the Beekman home, Brackett discovers a family
photo, realizing the woman he met at the front door earlier was not Dolores Beekman.
He also finds a discarded, empty envelope addressed to Darryl Jr. from Spring
Creek in the wastepaper basket with the number ‘307’ written in pen on one of
its corners. At the same instance, Peterson, attending the family’s pet canary
with a drink of water, discovers a piece of newsprint from the Spring Creek
Clarion used to line the birdcage. Lying to Brackett, that the element of
danger is too much for her to bear, Peterson pretends to back down from the
race; Brackett confidently boarding a flight to Spring Creek later the next
afternoon, only to discover Peterson in the seat next to his.

The two
schemers decide to pool their resources and work together to solve the mystery.
In Spring Creek, Peterson and Brackett learn of Darryl Beekman Sr.’s demise in
a house fire; the obituary stating the elder Beekman was a retired geneticist
from Chess Chemical, working on a new chemical compound referenced to only as
L.D.F. Next, the pair attempt to contact Beekman’s coauthor on the research,
Alan Hervey; arriving at his home only to learn from his wife, Virginia (Lisa
Lu) Alan has since suffered a debilitating stroke that has left him in a
permanent coma. Taking a hotel room for the night, Brackett and Peterson scope
the local watering hole for potential employees who might know something – or
at least get them past the front door of the company they so desperately want
to search for clues. The two make plans to meet back at a local all-night
coffee shop within the hour; Brackett latching on to Kim (Kelly Rutherford), a
sexy scientist who openly admits being hot for him. Showing up hours later with
Kim’s company swipe card in hand, Brackett becomes nervous when he spies Pecos
drinking coffee in a booth on the left. Alas, Brackett’s intuition proves
infallible when he hurries Peterson into his car, only to be held at gunpoint
by Pecos, who has since hidden himself in the backseat. Realizing their only
chance at escape is to put everyone in harm’s way, Brackett drives perilously
close to an oncoming semi, averting disaster at the last possible moment by
sending his car into a tailspin that knocks Pecos unconscious.

Escaping on
foot into the forest in the middle of the night, Brackett and Peterson become
lost. Old animosities are renewed; Peterson telling Brackett he’s gone soft.
Alas, Brackett has the last laugh when Peterson decides to take an early
morning skinny dip; the couple discovered by a troop of Cub Scouts. Promising
to shield her nakedness from prying eyes, Brackett instead instructs the boys
to pull out their cameras, darting off with Peterson’s clothes. A short while
later, Peterson and Brackett turn up in Atlantic City, pursued by Pecos but
sneaking into a Chapel of Love where they are inadvertently wed to escape
detection. Brackett attempts to make the best of their situation. He even
introduces Peterson to Smotherman, who sets up a meeting with Senator Robbins
to discuss L.D.F. – the experimental pasteurization chemical, newly approved by
the FDA, thanks to Robbin’s seal of approval. But Peterson is up to her old
tricks, disguising herself as a Chess Chemical tour guide and using Kim’s
stolen pass to sneak into the company’s restricted areas. She also has Brackett
forcibly ejected from the company on a faux charge of harassment. Incensed,
Brackett elects to take the next plane back to Chicago. He telephones
Smotherman to inform him of these developments; also, to suggest he has had it
with the story. No, Brackett’s going back to his old ‘new’ lifestyle; sipping
champagne and ogling starlets at poolside.

Only, his own
nagging conscience and curiosity will not leave well enough alone. Discovering
too late that Smotherman’s extension at the state capital is ‘307’, thereby
directly linking him to the various attempts on both their lives, Brackett
hurries to Chess Chemical where he discovers Smotherman, along with the
company’s CEO, Wilson Chess (Dan Butler) already taken Peterson hostage. She
gets the men to confess about their elaborate scheme to defraud and poison the
public using L.D.F. It seems Hervey and Beekman Sr.’s findings revealed the
product’s cancer-causing properties. Beekman wanted no part of it. His forced
retirement could not ensure his silence, so he was killed in a deliberately set
house fire. The company could also not be certain of Hervey’s complicity; so,
he was given something to bring on his stroke. Learning Beekman Sr. had sent
his son the microfilm as proof of his findings beforehand, prompted Wilson to
hire Mando to ‘take care’ of things on the train; the blood-letting leading
directly to Beekman’s widow, and finally, the various attempts made on Brackett
and Peterson’s lives.

Making his
presence known merely to deflect attention away and against Smotherman putting
a bullet in Peterson’s brain Brackett lures his one-time friend to a suspended
catwalk high above the laboratory.
Peterson reveals she has been carrying a concealed firearm – as she puts
it “a must for a woman of the nineties.” Threatening
to shoot Smotherman, he instead calls her bluff; Brackett instructing Peterson
to hang tight as he loosens the wires holding the suspended catwalk in place.
Clinging for dear life to its rickety handle rails, Brackett and Peterson are
spared the plummet to ground level; Smotherman falling to his death. The next
day, both the Globe and Chronicle’s headlines and accompanying stories champion
the sort of Macy’s/Gimble’s detente leading to the successful resolution of
this baffling case. In the final moments, we learn Brackett and Peterson have
decided to give their sham marriage a sincere try; presumably having discovered
common ground as rivals at long last; the friction generated from their
professional competition creating like-minded sparks of sexual magic. However,
only a moment or two later, Peterson is startled by the sound of an alarm going
off at the bank across the street from their hotel room, attempting to take
down particulars of the heist taking place; Brackett instead taking Peterson in
his arms, turning her away from the open window and pulling down the shade.

I Love Trouble is delightfully effervescent.
Few – if any – romantic comedies since have so cleverly wedded playful badinage
to an almost credible action/adventure yarn, primarily spent in service to the
lighthearted romp. Nick Nolte is a
gentleman’s rogue; immaculately quaffed and dressed in some stylish suits, but
reverting to a rumpled trench coat (a sort of Bogart gumshoe trademark) to do
his best sleuthing in the picture. It’s rather obvious Julia Roberts isn’t
quite as comfortable in her pavement-pounding patent leather pumps and
power-brokering/shoulder padded ensembles. Her best scenes are with Nolte.
Here, there seems to be a sort of anesthetizing chemistry at play; Nolte’s
arrogant charm rubbing Roberts’ stiff scissor-legged vixen just the right way;
the stultifying bloom of virgin-esque frigidity warming to his playful touch.
Mercifully, after a bit of time spent apart in the film’s first act, the pair
is together for the rest of its 123 minute runtime.

About this: as
early as 1997 it was announced in the trades that I Love Trouble had been rather unceremoniously pruned to
accommodate Buena Vista Distribution’s desire to have a more manageable length
for its general theatrical release. I can recall the championing of a new 149
min. director’s cut, coming soon to LaserDisc in the fall of 1997. Regrettably,
by then, DVD had debuted and with it, the obvious death knell for this larger
disc format. As the Walt Disney Company scrambled to re-release its more
popular catalog titles to DVD, plans for an extended cut of I Love Trouble were delayed, shelved
and presumably, eventually, scrapped – never again to resurface on the home
video radar. I’ll admit, at 123 minutes, I
Love Trouble doesn’t seem rushed; although there were several minor holes
(i.e. clarifications) in its narrative I would have preferred fleshed out.
Perhaps such anomalies might have been ironed out in the restored cut, although
it seems highly unlikely we’ll ever know.

Not long ago I
wrote extensively about the abysmal quality of Touchstone Home Video’s DVD. In
the foreign markets I Love Trouble
has resurfaced in 1080p. Exciting news? Well…sort of. While the image quality
takes a quantum leap ahead of its standard format counterpart (it wasn’t hard
to do…the DVD wasn’t even enhanced for widescreen TVs!!!) we still don’t have a
perfect rendering and this is, quite simply, a shame. The good news: the
foreign market discs are ‘region free’
so you can play them anywhere. Better still: color reproduction is spectacular
for the most part, showing off John Lindley’s slick and stylish cinematography
to its best advantage. Fine detail pops as it should, although there are more
than a handful of shots appearing softly focused.

Flesh tones
look very accurate and contrast is bang on: deep, rich, velvety blacks and
bright, though never blooming, whites. The bad: age-related artifacts – mostly
light dirt, a few minimal scratches but a fair amount of white speckling
throughout. The opening credits are in rougher shape than the rest of the film.
There’s also some intermittent edge enhancement. When it’s present it annoys. The
audio is DTS 5.1 but somehow unremarkable, even though it too is a huge
improvement over the DVD. I ordered my copy from Amazon.u.k.; the actual disc
coming from Poland, infinitely cheaper than the discs selling from Britain. For
several years there have been promises I
Love Troublewould resurface state’s side, either from Buena Vista or Mill
Creek. Promises, promises! Neither company has stepped up to the plate as yet.
So if you really want this movie, it’s currently available in hi-def. Loading
the disc immediately defaults to a menu where ‘English’ is the primary option
(other languages are available). Click ‘English’ and all of the menus, as well
as the feature itself, remain in ‘English’. No fuss, muss, turning on or off
subtitles, etc. Just click and go. Nicely done. Tragedy: still no extended cut of
the film and NO extras either. It’s unlikely anything will be done to improve
this transfer if and when it arrives on this side of the pond. So buy with
confidence. But don’t expect perfection. You can, however, anticipate a much
more film-like presentation. That’s a plus and the reason I recommend I Love Trouble on Blu-ray.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A few rarely
seen exotic locations, two uber-steamy sex scenes with co-stars, Rachel Ward
and Jeff Bridges, their tanned, taut and very naked flesh pressed up against
one another, and the prerequisite super-duper car chase, played out with a
flaming red and midnight black Ferrari attempts to mask the artistic vices in
Taylor Hackford’s Against All Odds
(1984); a misguided, undernourished and narratively convoluted remake of
Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past
(1947), itself a variation on Daniel Mainwaring’s gritty crime novel, Build
My Gallows High. At the very least, Tourneur’s adaptation had retained
Mainwaring’s overall dramatic arc, infusing the film with all the vintage
trappings of an elegant film noir. Superficially, Hackford has kept his remake
a fairly stylish affair; somewhat dated now in all its California-noir
accoutrements; the sun-scape of Mayan hovels, photographed in Chichen Itza, and
their even more exotic ancient temples at Tulum, juxtaposed with slick,
big-haired creature comforts, populated by mindless sex kittens and preening
yuppie trust fund babies, cavorting inside L.A.’s Palace nightclub or tossing
sweaty volleyballs along the sand-baked peninsula of California’s Manhattan
Beach. It all looked absolutely ravishing; with cameos for Jane Greer and Paul
Valentine; alumni from Tourneur’s decidedly scaled down original. Alas, in the
final analysis, Against All Odds
lacks the one essential ingredient to make everything click: star power.

Tourneur’s
film was blessed with Robert Mitchum - a commanding presence, Kirk Douglas –
showing off the sort of beady-eyed criminality that would become his stock and
trade for nearly a decade, and finally, Jane Greer as the deliciously
kitten-faced, but cat-clawing minx, set to ensnare and devour both men in her
web of lies. Hackford’s remake placed its bets on setting instead of character.
It also makes several egregious misfires along the way; Eric Hughes’ screenplay
deviating too much from Tourneur’s classic to become one in its own right. Mitchum’s
world-weary gumshoe is replaced in the remake by Jeff Bridges’ arrogant
dinosaur, Terry Brogan; a star quarterback with a bum shoulder and razor-back
attitude, showing more brawn than brain where Rachel Ward’s pouty princess,
Jessie Wyler is concerned. Looking every inch the leading man (thanks to a
crash course diet and exercise regime that shed nearly 20lbs., turning pudge
into beefcake) Bridges nevertheless cannot muster up enough of the intangible
‘stud quality’ to make the illusion stick for very long; resorting to a series
of pithy, wounded retorts after discovering Jessie has gone back – or rather,
been reeled in by the oily racketeer, gambler and nightclub owner, Jake Wise
(James Woods).

Donald E.
Thorin’s cinematography gives the film its edgy appeal; transforming the Yucatán
peninsula, Isla Mujeres, and Cozumel, Mexico into steamy enclaves of tropical
eroticism. His splendid camerawork also lends an air of foreboding to the
Hollywood/L.A. locations dominating the second half of the picture. In
retrospect, Hackford is trying too hard to evoke a narrative and visual style
that by 1984 had not been seen on the screen since the 1940’s; the look of a
vintage noir, a queer fit for the glossy go-go eighties; its steel and concrete
jungle never quite adopting that tangibly haunted pang of urban decay feeding
off its humanity.

Still, another blunder
is the lover’s triangle. In Tourneur’s classic, Kathy Moffat (Jane Greer) is a
grotesquely unsympathetic femme fatale; her paralytic stare as she pulls the
trigger to dispense with an unwanted inconvenience, a truly vicious act of
cold-blooded murder. Greer’s unrepentant mantrap is, in fact, one of the
irrefutable highlights of Out of the
Past. Against All Odds suffers
from the absence of such a strong character; Rachel Ward’s sweat-stained harpy,
looking decidedly unrefreshed from her most recent flagrante delicto with Terry
inside a Mayan temple, seemingly incapable of emitting anything greater than
spoiled, sulking greed and abject panic as she plugs Terry’s best friend and
mentor, Hank Sully (Alex Karras) with his own gun.

It isn’t
entirely Ward’s fault, though it remains a little hard to think of The Thorn Birds’ Meggie Cleary capable
of killing anyone – even with her more warrior-like stance and severely chopped
tresses showcased in Against All Odds.
Yet, the screenplay’s attempt to transform Ward from fiery vixen to wiry,
conflicted sex kitten is not altogether successful. Ward actually seems rather clumsy and
uncomfortable throughout most of the movie, tossing off her lines with a low
stammer or tear-stained visage. Like Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward looks every inch
the star – or, at least, what was expected of one back in the 1980’s. Naked or
sheathed in Michael Kaplan’s costumes, these two make for some fairly striking
eye candy. The tragedy, of course, is that neither seem to be able to act their
way out of the proverbial paper bag; Bridges holding his own but never rising
to a level beyond mere competency. His petulant love-struck puppy, licking
wounds after Jessie has gone back to Jake, reeks of adolescent fancy denied,
rather than full-blooded mature masculinity, brutalized and emasculated by this
revelation.

It’s this sort
of ‘wet behind the ears’ take on
human sexuality, the act itself procured between decidedly improper strangers,
that really weighs the movie down as we segue into the convoluted third act;
Hackford apparently aware he is in trouble, puffing out the piece with an
ill-timed big and splashy production number, ‘My Male Curiosity’ – featuring a zoot-suited Kid Creole (a.k.a. Thomas
August Darnell Browder) and his ‘Coconuts’ (a trio of big-haired
pseudo-Rockettes, who should have paid a little more attention to the unshaved
hair dangling from their exposed pits than their teased and tweezed bleached
blonde tresses shaped like spikey haired football helmets). Taylor Hackford is a fine storyteller, as
movies like 1982’s An Officer and a
Gentleman and 1995’s Dolores Claiborne
attest. But with wooden performances from his central cast and the unnecessary
insertions of a few needless – if chart-topping – pop tunes (Phil Collin’s ‘Take A Look At Me Now’ becoming the movie’s
anthem) Hackford isn’t cutting the mustard on Against All Odds - or even the cheese, for that matter – the odor
left behind, one of quiet desperation.

On a$13,000,000
budget, Against All Odds grossed
$25,000,000 domestically; a marginally impressive money maker for Columbia
Pictures. Alas, the film has no staying power; its cardboard cutout stick
figures, utterly disposable and easily purged from the memory once the
houselights have come up; the movie’s incessant cling to then trending pop
tunes badly dating it ever since. And the story, such as it is, makes no sense
at all. We’re not talking about John Huston’s The Big Sleep (1946); a classic noir in which none of the pieces
fit and yet everything seems to click anyway; primarily because of the sensual
on-screen chemistry between co-stars Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. And
lest we forget that Bogie and Bacall turn up the heat without shedding a single
strip of clothing! If only to have had the good fortune of such kinetic
attraction between Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward there might have been something
in Against All Oddsto pin the
movie’s smoldering mantra of distasteful sex in a place where not only the
janitors could admire it.

Hackford does
give us some marvelous set pieces; Jophery Brown and Bill Burton’s doubling for
Bridges and Woods in the harrowing car chase down the narrow, winding corridors
of Beverly Hills, is a first-rate tour de force; Hackford placing himself in
harm’s way in the camera car, the triage of vehicles careening in and out of
oncoming traffic and truly raising the blood pressure more than a notch or two.
In another sequence, stunt man extraordinaire (but then novice) Carl Ciarfalio
(doubling for a deceased Alex Karras) performs a dead fall off a seventy-five
foot precipice into a murky lagoon; the belly flop knocking him momentarily
unconscious, but nevertheless earning him his stripes to rise to the top of his
profession. For what it’s worth, the Kid Creole production number, clumsily
hacked together and frequently interrupted with inserts of Terry and Jake at
each other’s throats, is mildly amusing for its audacious display of hairy female
armpits and misappropriated James Brown moves; Creole, looking as though he’s
raided Cab Calloway’s wardrobe for the evening.

However, there
are too many loose ends left at the end of the movie; too many good performers
utterly wasted and/or lost in the shuffle. There is, for example, no good
reason to draw our attention to the likes of Terry’s controlling matriarch,
Mrs. Wyler; Jane Greer – looking surprisingly youthful and vibrant (despite her
gray hair) – but given short shrift in a walk-on part any B-grade middle-aged
actress could have filled without drawing attention to herself: ditto for
Richard Widmark’s truncated appearance as the family’s looming attorney, Bill
Caxton. Greer and Widmark are old hams with more to deliver than what they’ve
been offered. The appearance of Swoozie Kurtz – as a frizzy-haired ‘his gal Friday’ – and Saul Rubinek - the
disreputable pseudo-villain/fop, Steve Kirsch – do little to augment the story.
Both are making their movie debut in Against
All Odds. But neither makes much of a ripple; more distraction than solid,
integral characters needed to propel the story along.

Hackford has
trouble breaking into the point of his story. In Out of the Past, the narrative flashback structure greatly
benefited from Robert Mitchum’s voice-over narration; one of the main staples of
film noir. Hackford opens on a series of cryptic visuals; Terry Brogan driving
through the streets of Cozumel, confronting its citizenry on foot with a
snapshot taken of Jessie Wyler seated next to Jake Wise. He’s unsuccessful at
learning the whereabouts of this mysterious heiress; Hackford regressing into a
clumsy and prolonged flashback to explain away the particulars. We see Terry
Brogan as the high paid quarterback for L.A.’s Outlaws – a team that hasn’t won
a single game all season. The owner, Mrs. Wyler isn’t pleased. Actually, she’s
not even concerned; her interests presently invested in a new housing
development project met with considerable resistance from local Greenpeacers,
fronted by activist, Bob Soames (Allen Williams). All this is back story of a
kind; ditto for the head coach (Bill McKinney) putting Terry through the ringer
with a tackling dummy. Just come off a fresh and supposedly career-ending
shoulder injury, Terry is asked to prove himself. But assistant trainer, Hank
Sully is a good friend. He hates to see Terry ruin his chances for a comeback
this way.

There’s a
light skirmish of words between Hank and Bill Caxton, the latter, a mouthpiece
for Mrs. Wyler. Terry is unceremoniously cut from the team without explanation,
barging into Steve Kirsch’s office for some answers – or, at least, sound legal
advice – after Steve refuses to take any of Terry’s phone calls. Kirsch’s
secretary, Edie, attempts to do some damage control. Actually, she’s a groupie
with a severely transparent crush on Terry who, even out of his shoulder pads
and spandex, cuts an impressively handsome figure. It’s no use, however. Terry
has revenge on his mind. It won’t keep either. In the meantime, an old
‘friend’, Jake Wise offers Terry a chance to make a cool $30,000; chump change
compared to what he was being paid to play for the Outlaws, but a definite
means to an end to shore up his ailing cash flow and keep his lavish lifestyle
afloat. It seems Jake’s girl, none other than Mrs. Wyler’s spoiled daughter,
Jessie, has run off to parts unknown after stabbing Jake in the leg with a
letter opener. Jake’s a notorious racketeer with his fingers stuck in too many
pies; his latest endeavor – The Palace nightclub – a hip and trendy place where
the elite meet to compete.

After a
perilous game of cat and mouse through the congested streets, Jake proposes to
send Terry in search of Jessie; not to avenge the wound that has left him
dependent on a cane for the time being, but because he wants her back in his
bed. Terry isn’t interested – at first. But then he thinks of how such an
investigation might place him in closer proximity to Mrs. Wyler and Caxton;
using their accidental/on purpose ‘chance meeting’ at the country club to beg
for his old job back. Too bad, Mrs. Wyler makes it perfectly clear how
disposable she considers him. She doesn’t need another aging football star. As
far as she’s concerned, Terry’s best days as a player are behind him. But she
will sweeten this bitter pill to swallow by offering Terry twice Jake’s stipend
if he will bring Jessie back to L.A. for her. Words are exchanged, and Terry
allows his arrogance to overtake and ruin his chances to take Mrs. Wyler’s
money instead of Jake’s. Sully forewarns
that accepting Jake’s wager can only end in tears – possible, worse. Sully campaigns to find Terry a coaching job.
But Terry bungles this too, showing up to Mrs. Wyler’s fund raiser and
assaulting Kirsch; tossing him into the bandstand after the two have words
about Steve’s betrayal of their friendship. Again, all this is back story to
the actual plot – and most of it fairly inconsequential to what will follow it.
Terry storms off in a rage, informing Sully he has decided to take Jake up on
his offer.

We return to
the present – or rather, the point where we were when the credits first rolled:
Terry locating Jessie in Cozumel. However, Terry’s ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt’ routine doesn’t win him any points with
Jessie. She’s cold and aloof and becoming more suspicious by the moment. His
offer to take her to dinner is dismissed outright. Now Terry asks if Jessie’s
aversion is to football players, tacos or beer. “I like tacos and beer” she dispassionately explains before
speeding away on a motor scooter. The next day Terry tries to wear down Jessie’s
resolve once again. His ill timing is compounded when he fails to meet the
ferry leaving with Jessie on board for a remote island getaway; Terry
chartering a speed boat posthaste to make chase across the open waters. He
finds Jessie perched atop the Mayan ruins and flirts with her again. She is
belittling and belligerent, and Terry – having had enough – tells her what she
can do with herself in no uncertain terms.

Nothing
excites a woman like Jessie like rejection. And so, a short while later a
shirtless Terry is surprised to find Jessie tapping on his hotel door. The two
verbally spar again, but this time it leads to an invitation from Jessie; to
her private hideaway where she’s been staying ever since leaving America. In
this remote tropical oasis the two become lovers; Jessie confiding her fears
about going home and Terry promising to protect and cover for her. He lies to
Jake about not having located Jessie just yet, but then confides in Jessie, how
Jake knows about his shaving points off an important game to cover a gambling
debt. Jessie and Terry share a few blissful weeks together, spending long hours
naked in each other’s arms. Ah, but then Sully arrives; another stooge involved
in Jake’s sports syndicate and sent by Jake to investigate; catching the lovers
in their latest bump and grind inside a darkened temple at Chichen Itza.
Wielding a pistol, Sully demands Terry turn Jessie over to him. Terry attempts
to chivalrously defend Jessie’s honor. But Sully’s an old pro with at least
thirty solid pounds on him. The men spar, Terry losing badly until Jessie
seizing the discarded pistol. She fatally shoots Sully, who dies in Terry’s
arms. Terry insists they go to the police, but Jessie shrieks about how naïve
Terry is and what will become of them if they confess their complicity to a
murder. No one, least of all the corrupt local officials, will believe it was
self-defense.

So, Terry
reluctantly carries Sully’s corpse to a nearby lagoon, weighing the body down
with a heavy rock and tossing him over the edge of a high precipice. Returning
to his hotel suite, Terry discovers Jessie has fled. He returns to L.A. without
her, ready to tell Jake his trip abroad was not a success. Too bad for Terry,
Jake already knows this. How? Why from the horse’s mouth; Jessie having
returned to his side. Jake now orders
Terry to break into Kirsch’s office and steal some incriminating documents for
him; Kirsch also a part of the points-shaving enterprise. Alas, this too is a
setup, Terry discovering Kirsch already dead in his office; planted there by a
security guard hired to shoot Terry, presumably for committing the murder
himself. Instead, Terry manages a daring escape; hiding Kirsch’s body and
hooking up with Edie at a nearby local watering hole. He confides what has
happened and she tells him about a secret box in Kirsch’s office. This contains
the incriminating documents about the entire syndicate. In one of the clumsiest entanglements, Terry
forces Edie to return with him to Kirsch’s office to retrieve these files;
encountering a pair of corrupt security guards, but managing yet another
successful escape with the files in tow.

Terry now
confronts Jake at The Palace nightclub, seemingly for no other reason than for
director, Hackford to stage the aforementioned production number with Kid
Creole; also to show off the cleverness in Richard Lawrence’s production
design; effectively combining Jake’s office set with inserts of Creole’s
performance, repeatedly glimpsed through a frosted art deco two-way mirror. In
Hackford’s original edit, there ought to have been a scene to follow this in
which Terry jealously observes through a window as Jake makes love to Jessie;
waiting for Jake’s post-coital departure before bursting into the bedroom to
ravage Jessie himself. Apparently, to avoid an R-rating, Hackford was forced to
cut Terry’s tawdry observations, the scene (as it exists in the film)
incongruously switching from the nightclub confrontation to the moment where
Jessie – already alone – is confronted by Terry, who takes his liberties as he
pleases. It should be pointed out that the sex scenes in Against All Odds are handled with a general and marginally cruel
distaste for the nudity: the…uh… passion, played with the venom of two feral
cats, recklessly forcing themselves on each other. There’s even more contempt
at play during the aforementioned final encounter; the mutual craving almost
devolving into a pseudo-rape; Jessie given to her hunger to possess Terry for
what will ultimately be their last time together.

Jessie professes
her love for Terry, confiding in Caxton her intimate knowledge of Jake’s
spurious racketeering, also his complicity in Kirsch’s murder. What Jessie is
unaware of is Caxton is actually the puppet master of the whole syndicate. Caxton
sets up a midnight rendezvous with Terry at Mrs. Wyler’s construction site
where he intends to murder Terry and make it look like an accident. Instead,
Terry manages to disarm Caxton’s henchman, former assistant coach and Jake’s thug
muscle, Tommy (Dorian Harewood). Terry barters Jake’s life for the files. When
Caxton suggests it would be a fair trade, Jake pulls a gun on Jessie, forcing
Terry to emerge from his hiding place and drop his gun. Jessie seizes the
opportunity and murders Jake instead. Blackmailed by Caxton for Jake and
Sully’s murders, Jessie is forced to return to her mother’s side or face the
prospect of going to jail. A short while
later, Terry attends the inaugural of Mrs. Wyler’s construction project;
casting flirtatious glances at Jessie from across the way, much to Mrs. Wyler’s
chagrin. It seems she has been instrumental at providing Terry with an offer to
play pro football in Miami. “Remember, Brogan,” Caxton reminds
Terry, “You’re out of her life.” But
Terry knows better, replying, “I figure
that's up to her. You're not going to control us forever.”

Against All Odds has its’ moments, but they never
quite come together, perhaps because sex and car chases are poor substitutes
for substance, regardless of the stylish nature by which each is brought to the
big screen. Classifying Taylor Hackford’s efforts as an ‘erotic thriller’ doesn’t give the movie cache, class or star power;
the latter absolutely necessary to make the enterprise click as a whole. The
biggest transgressor against making any of it memorable is the performances.
There’s not a standout among them; the players going through mere motions. The
most that can be said of the chemistry between Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward is
they look good when pressed up against one another, like a pair of peel and
stick dolls from a Colorforms play set; perhaps one that only Fredericks of
Hollywood would approve. In the role originated by Kirk Douglas, James Woods –
though a generally fine actor – is a wan ghost of his predecessor. Pasting
Woods’ gaunt frame into a skin-hugging black wife-beater during the moment of
confrontation between Jake and Terry only serves to exaggerate the meagerness
of his physicality. True, like Douglas’ Whit in Out of the Past, Woods’ Jake Wise is meant to be ‘lesser than’. He
rules by fear. But unlike Douglas, Woods isn’t believable in the part; the penultimate
showdown at the construction site revealing a scared little man, cowering when
pushed into a dead end situation.

The other big
mistake for this remake is keeping both Jessie and Terry alive to rue the day
they ever met, but to continue to be stirred by the remnant sting of their obnoxious
lust for one another. Jacques Tourneur’s classic wisely dispatched every ne'er-do-well
to their untimely – but justly deserved – end. Hackford’s finale is as impossibly
unsatisfying as one might expect; Terry going off to wreck his body for another
team as its organ grinder’s monkey – albeit, a high-priced one – and a tearful,
and seemingly reformed, Jessie left to lament the loss of the only man who
could show her a good time and really mean it; her doleful gazes caught across
a crowded room and played to the syrupy strains of Phil Collin’s ‘Take A Look At Me Now’. Concluding the
movie on this pop ballad, played under the end credits, leaves a truly sour
note behind; the song’s twang ‘upbeat’ promise of hope and love springing
eternal, possibly made renewable somewhere in the near future (most likely
after Jessie has managed to pump another bullet into Caxton or drive his car
over the edge of a cliff and poison her own mother with some arsenic-spiked
herbal tea), is much too plucky and promising to cap off these terrible peoples’
truly sordid lives. Not only is it untrue to the original film, but it is
essentially unconvincing to the remake.

There ought to
have been no light at the end of this darkened tunnel; something Tourneur
understood in Out of the Past. The
original movie begins and ends under the cover of night. Against All Odds betrays its noir roots by starting and finishing
in the stark pall of California sunlight. Have we been teased into the
proverbial happy ending or merely betrayed by Hackford into thinking Jessie and
Terry will have a future together someday; one that doesn’t require sandy beaches,
swaying palms or perpetually love-making to satisfy and sustain them?
Interestingly, Rachel Ward’s enterprising film career was cut short by her
marriage to Bryan Brown (her costar in The
Thorn Birds); evidently, the two contented to start and raise a family; the
couple still happily married – a Hollywood rarity, indeed. Both Taylor Hackford
and Jeff Bridges have gone on record, stating Brown seemed to have no problem
with his then newlywed wife performing some fairly scandalous nude scenes in
the movie. Perhaps Brown was merely confident he had married the right girl.
But Ward spends an awful lot of the film completely nude; Donald E. Thorin’s
artful placement of the camera and co-star, Jeff Bridge’s limbs providing a
sense of false modesty.

Against All Odds debuts on Blu-ray via Image
Entertainment in a stunning 1080p transfer licensed from Sony Home
Entertainment. This has to be one of the most impressive offerings from Image
which, in more recent times, has devolved into a company with a really spotty track
record in providing us with such exemplars in the hi-def format. Against All Odds is a reference quality
disc. There is absolutely nothing to complaint about: a pluperfect mastering
effort, typified by exquisite color reproduction – richly saturated, gorgeous
flesh tones, superbly rendered contrast, naturalistic film grain and a complete
eradication of age-related artifacts. Wow, and thank you! If you are a fan of
this movie then you are going to love this disc. The 5.1 DTS stereo is equally
superb; yielding remarkable bass for a vintage 80’s flick. Larry Carlton and Michel Colombier’s score sounds
fantastic. We get a pair of audio commentaries; one featuring Taylor Hackford,
Jeff Bridges and James Woods, who spend the bulk of the track waxing about
superfluous points of only marginal interest. More satisfying on the whole is
the secondary track with Hackford and his screenwriter, Eric Hughes. As a
matter of interest, the famous poster for Against
All Odds (also depicted on the front of this Blu-ray case) depicts a moment
never seen in the finished film. This, along with other excised portions, is
included as deleted scenes. We also get a theatrical trailer. Bottom line:
while I have my doubts about the movie, this Blu-ray is very highly recommended
for quality: a fantastic effort!

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca